You Learn Something Every Day If You Pay Attention

I apologise in advance for the stereotypical “Hi I’m a fun substitute teacher” style this blog has been written in. I always really enjoyed a good substitute teacher’s class. Not the ones who just put a video on and put their feet up, the ones who tried, who still cared about education they knew there was no time to try to instil discipline in the students so instead nervously tried to make the class interesting by trying to be a slighty creepy mate. Hi that’s me right now.

The following blog has been written with the purpose of hopefully entertaining you while summarising where we think the job market has been, currently is and where it is heading.

The Evolution of the Job Market.

A summary of the changes that have shaped the job market so far and the changes we can expect to see in the future and what they mean for the current state of recruitment and the future.

The Evolution of The Job Market

From classifieds to telepathy aren’t we clever monkeys.

Monkeys

Like monkeys searching for lice, we once rifled through the classifieds in the back of the local paper searching for our dream job or at least a job.

Circled the best options called the phone number posted a C.V and crossed our fingers that it wasn’t a wasted stamp.

Humans

Then things evolved, slightly. The recruitment agencies popped up on the high street. We went in registered handed in a copy of our typed up cover letter C.V and hoped that they would match us up to the best job that fell into their hands, or we gave up hope and just accepted whatever job they had to offer. We stayed local and when we eventually landed a job well we often decided to make a career out of it, the recruitment process is long and uncertain and well we just can’t be bothered doing all that again.

The Age of Agriculture

As humans we developed agricultural skills, using tools to grow what we could from the earth. The jobs market used the internet to grow. In 15 years the internet became accountable for almost 100 percent of hires growing from just 1 percent. Applying for jobs became as easy as clicking our fingers and opposable thumbs. Job ads were out there easily seen by almost everyone and anywhere. Candidates were no longer limited to looking locally and applications were now free and fast. One click C.V Sent. Apply for the next one. Am I actually qualified to do it? Doesn’t matter it’s not costing me anything to apply. And on and on it went. With any given job now receiving 100 applicants compared to just 10 in years previous. Hiring manager were now inundated with candidates. Too many candidates. Too many decisions too much work. Time to get specific and technical.

Tools Became Robots

Which leads us to the current day. A Candidate led Market. Mass applications have created the need for highly specialised job descriptions as employers attempt to eliminate under qualified applicants.

It has become a matter of marketing on both sides. Candidates are encouraged to market themselves using social media to demonstrate their personal brand to the world including prospective employers . Companies also need to market themselves to reach the right applicants they have even started using social media directly reach candidates to send their high spec jobs.

Our latest study looked at how this is working out and what candidates prefer.

So where are we going to next?

With the preference of email contact in mind we are turning to more diverse methods of talent sourcing.

A.I Took Over and Killed Us All.

The future talks of software that uses social media data to detect when people are thinking about changing job. Yes thinking … so telepathy?

Until then how about we build 270m people profiles using snippets from the social web and fill in all the missing skill gaps to produce a complete picture of every candidate profile? Specialised humans could do it, with about a 1000 years to spare, that’s why we’ve used artificial intelligence. Using mathematics and data we have (machine) learned our “bots” with domain intelligence from our 270m profiles worldwide, this enables us to complete candidate profiles regardless of their role type.

Our new evolvement keeps both clients and candidates happy, recruiters have access to a fresh pool of candidates un-restricted by a platform which is over fished and waning in popularity. Candidates get jobs, by email, from actual employers (sorry no recruitment agencies allowed).